Kenner’s Movie Viewer was used to feature a variety of the company’s licensed properties, including Snoopy, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Star Wars and the movie Alien.
For more stories behind some of your favorite toys visit Toy Tales.
Jellykoe continued its line of Tox City plush creations at C2E2. They're colorful characters that make me think of something you'd see in a Cartoon Network show. Maybe one day...
You can get a rundown of the Tox City line from Jellykoe's website. New for the show was the double hot dog plush. I think of it more as artwork, though. Look at it: two hot dogs in the same bun, embracing. Ketchup and mustard. What could be more perfect?
Playing with toys is a lot of fun. Tidying them away after each play session is a real chore. Unless you’ve got a quick and easy way of scooping them up and stashing them away. Well say hello to Play & Go. They’re a Belgian based company and creators of a kids play mat that […]
The post Kids Play Mats That Make it Easier for the Littles to Cleanup After Themselves appeared first on Kids Love This Stuff!.
The fact that Good Smile Company has embraced the Mikudayo meme should tell you something about who they are as a company. If you thought Mikudayo would just be a one-off, though, you'd be wrong. She's back in force this year with the flowery Sakura variant.
Pre-orders for Sakura Mikudayo are up for a downright cheap ¥2,963. I'm guessing the licensing costs for Miku's likeness are significantly lower than for the various anime characters GSC makes. Sakura Mikudayo is set for an August release. As a bonus, if you missed out on the original Mikudayo, pre-orders are up for her re-release too!
[ Pre-order at HobbyLink Japan | Hobby Search | AmiAmi | Big in Japan ]
When Hasbro did their year-long reveal of the Combiner Wars theme for the Transformers Generations line last year fans were simultaneously excited and confused. On one hand we're getting proper updates to popular G1 combiner teams, but at the same time key team members were notably absent. In the case of the Aerialbots it was Slingshot replaced by new guy Alpha Bravo. AB is by no means a bad figure, but you really want to get the band back together.
Not long ago rumors began going around that Slingshot would be coming back later in the line. Soon after Takara Tomy announced their Warriors Unite series which features a Slingshot figure repainted from a Fireflight figure with a new head. Then Hasbro finally said what we wanted to hear: "the rumors are true." The newly christened Quickslinger along with Brake-Neck (formerly Wildrider) will be hitting online shops in May and this is one of the first in-hand looks you'll find anywhere!
Figure Name: Transformers Generations Combiner Wars Deluxe Quickslinger
Figure Maker: Hasbro
Retail Price: TBA
Available at: Coming soon!
And here we are! Nothing really different about the packaging compared to the other figures in the line. He's in the North American packaging rather than the international packaging so it should be interesting to see what this means for availability in other countries. He comes with IDW's Combiner Wars comic #3, likely the same comic that Firefly (Fireflight) comes with.
From the back of the box. An error was made in the diagram for Superion showing Quickslinger as the same mold as Skydive instead of Firefly. At least the G1 team members are correct, unlike on Brake-Neck's package. But that's enough about the package, let's get to the figure.
And here's Quickslinger! People who already own Firefly will know what to expect from Quickslinger, but there are still some things worth pointing out. The colors come from a couple difference influences. For the most part the figure is based on the colors from the original G1 figure. However the black hands and feet make their way from the G1 cartoon. The blue visor is likely IDW's doing or maybe just Hasbro wanting to break things up a bit. If you want him with the orange visor you'll have to get the Takara Tomy version.
The use of black really helps to separate the two even though they're basically the exact same figure. The gold paint is also nice, it's very shiny. Firefly's silver on white treatment doesn't really do it for me. Don't get me wrong, Firefly isn't a bad looking figure, I just don't find it as interesting despite all the red.
From the side you can get an idea of how massive his lower legs are. I actually don't mid that since it gives him some great stability. People complain about the legs being hollow, but really, they kinda have to be for the transformation process. He's actually a pretty sturdy figure and the hollow legs help with the combined mode.
He does have a lot of stuff on his back, all of the Aerialbots do, but it's a far cry from the original G1 figure that had what amounted to tiny jets on their backs. His transformation isn't quite as straightforward as it looks.
A closer look at his face reveals something interesting. I don't know if it's intentional or just a flaw in the mold, but there's this 'crack' going across his forehead. He was killed in the comics (though expected to return somehow eventually) hence him being left out of the team originally, so I'll take it as battle damage. Typically he's viewed as a little guy and something of a braggart, but that face is all business. Dying sure does change a bot.
His articulation pretty good, a nice combination of ball joints and clicky ones. I'm especially happy with the bicep swivel that all Combiner Wars figures have. Every now and then Hasbro leaves them out so I'm always happy to see them used. Wrist articulation would have been nice, but this is what's normal for Deluxe class figures these days.
He does have the added benefit of being able to look up. His head is sculpted in such a way to give enough clearance for him to do this. Not all of the figures in the line can do this and it's not a part of the transformation so it's a nice little extra.
He's also pretty well armed. All CW figures have two weapons. The first is their primary which varies from figure to figure. Some have guns and others have melee arms. Then there's the secondary weapon, capable of taking multiple forms. Aside from being a weapon it can also turn into a foot or articulated hand for the combined form. In vehicle mode some even turn into engines. Some say they're too small as feet and too big as hands, but I think they're fine as is.
I feel like this jet mode suits him better than it does Firefly. On the G1 figure his wings run even with the top of the jet where the original Firefly (or Fireflight) had his wings run even with the bottom of the jet. In all likelihood this mold was designed with both figures in mind from the start, but I definitely see more G1 in this figure than in the Firefly version.
Usually all white would make a figure blander, but for some reason I like him more than the red. Maybe it's the orange cockpit, I was never a fan of the silver one.
It's a bit strange, but these Deluxe class figures don't have proper landing gear. This mold does have a front wheel, but the others don't. So he basically just props himself up on his feet. I wish they would have sculpted fake wheels into his feet at least. I guess he's lucky to have feet at all, some of the others don't.
He does a fair enough job of hiding his bot parts. Surprisingly they didn't take the simple method of having his lower legs slide up over his thighs. Instead the legs split and fold up and over the thighs. It seems more complicated, I'm not entirely sure what the benefit is, except that in the long run you don't have to worry about the sliding parts wearing out and the figure not properly standing. Nearly all of the CW figures use a variation on this leg transformation.
Of course you can also mount the weapons under the wings if you want. These figures all have multiple 5mm ports you can plug weapons into so you can stick weapons into different places. Each figure has ports in different places so placement is up to you.
The complete team is pretty impressive, made up of five Deluxe class, one Legends class, and one Voyager class. A lot of people thought Alpha Bravo looked too much like Quickslinger, but side by side they couldn't be any more different. Of course we still have to cover their main purpose, to combine!
Superion is nothing short of impressive towering at a foot tall. Here I have Quickslinger acting as a leg. Back in the G1 days the jet side of the leg was always in the back. I was never a big fan of that. If a giant robot is made of a bunch of vehicles I want to see vehicle parts. I'm happy with the way these are configured. I've seen a lot of people display these with the lower legs backwards, but you lose the knee joint in the process so I don't really see the point.
Superion is an action figure just like any other and has all of the articulation you'd expect from a large figure. He's also very solid and well balanced, possibly the best combiner that Hasbro has ever made.
Here's Quickslinger as an arm. Where the leg configuration isn't all that much different from his jet mode, the arm configuration is more like his bot mode. There's a lot of clearance here thanks to the jets being fairly thin characters so you get a lot of ROM from the arms. The bot thighs acting as an elbow joint lets him flex a little bit more and the bot pelvis works like a bicep swivel. The shoulder joint is the leg mode's knee so there's a lot of movement there as well.
Hey, remember a couple years ago when Hasbro tried to make a combining Fall of Cybertron Bruticus? That figure was something of an abomination, but it had the right idea using a universal combination joint allowing for components to act as both arms and legs. It wasn't very well executed, but I like to think that Hasbro learned a lot from that experiment and Combiner Wars turned out all the better for it. I do wish they made a way for the weapons to combine as well, but with all of the ports on the figures you can probably find a way to make the most of them all the same.
So there you have it. Now that Quickslinger is here we have a genuine complete G1 Aerialbot team for the first time in nearly 30 years! It's been a massive undertaking for Hasbro and it has paid off in a big way. It's a modern approach to a vintage character without doing a massive overhaul of the character design. This is just the tip of the iceberg in Hasbro's two year plan for Combiner Wars. The Protectobots are starting show at the time of this writing, a massive Devastator will be here later in the year, the Fan Built Combiner is in the works, and rumors have been running wild over many other additions among other things. Hasbro has been putting so much work into this it might very well be another 30 years before we see them take on another project like this.
[Huge thanks to Hasbro for providing the product samples used in this review!]
